Racing

The air was crisp and fresh in the grass parking lot at Sly Fox Brewing Company at 7:30am on a peaceful Sunday morning. Just a few hours later, the serene scape around the beer garden would turn into an all-out bike, beer, and heckle-fest otherwise known as a cyclocross race. Across the states, attendance in cyclocross events has more than tripled since 2005, and the Philly scene appears to be thr...

The Rocky Race is Philadelphia’s oldest continuously running alleycat. The first Rocky Race was organized by Dan Murphy in 1997, followed by Rocky II in 1998, again by Murphy. After Rocky II, there was a gap in time till the next Rocky Race was held. Fast forward to 2005, the Philadelphia Bicycle Messenger Association wanted to throw a kick ass pre-event for the Cycle Messenger World Champio...

Back on form at the MASS Summer Sizzler. Last time I checked in I was busy preparing for the Trans-Sylvania Epic, a seven-day mountain bike stage race held in State College, PA. As one of my first target races of the year I went into the race with high expectations for myself. I was hoping to finish on the overall podium as well as win the Under 25 young rider competition. While I just missed the ...

I couldn’t have been happier with my performance at French Creek. The last few weeks since returning from the Whiskey Off-Road in Arizona have been absolute chaos. I’ve put in a ton of quality training hours, raced a bunch, and even stood on a couple of podiums. Off the bike, Team RDC held our first annual Million Dollar Bike Ride. It was a massive success with 550 riders raising 1.4 m...

Just one of the amazing views offered by the trail systems surrounding Prescott. The Whiskey Off-Road is an event I’ve been looking forward to racing for years. It is an incredibly challenging event with over 8,000 feet of vertical gain in 50 miles of racing. It is also one of the richest mountain bike races in North America with a $40,000 pro purse. As long as I could deal with the altitude...

Please join team Rare Disease and myself for the Million Dollar Bike on Saturday, May 3rd. Tree meet handlebars. Shoulder meet ground. Health Insurance meet ER X-Ray bills. My Sunday morning ride in the Wissahickon ended a little abruptly this past weekend. It wasn’t the best way to finish a great week of training, also not the worst considering my collarbone wasn’t broken and my shoul...

You’d be hard pressed to find a city with a better skyline than Philly. Exhale. Getting the first chunk of early season racing out of the way has been a huge relief. The pressure to perform at the beginning of the season is always extremely high. I’m getting good at managing my nerves, but preparing for the first races of the season is always the hardest. I didn’t quite get the r...

Michelle Lee coming over the barriers at West Chester Cross in October. Photo by Bill White. Participation and interest in Cyclocross racing has grown dramatically in this country in recent years. With Singlespeed Cyclocross World Championships (SSCXWC) coming to Philadelphia in December, we thought it was time to find out a bit more about the cyclocross community in the region. Michelle Lee, loca...

The 6th Annual Hell of Hunterdon was run on March 22. Beginning and ending in Lambertville, NJ, the 77-mile ride featured 18 sections of dirt and gravel roads and a respectable amount of climbing. Here are some pictures from the ride taken by Pete Bakken. All photos by p.bakken, Instagram @betepakken

In the front of our chase group early in the race. Photo Credit: MTBMike.com Following a stellar week of riding and hanging out in sunny SoCal, I was looking forward to my second set of races for this trip. The course at Southridge Park in Fontana was a drastic change from the previous week. Though both courses have a surplus of steep climbs, the loose and open climbs of Bonelli Park were replaced...

The Singlespeed Cyclocross World Championships 2013 (SSCXWC13) brought surreal cyclocross in Philly to a new level. That’s a strong statement, as for the last seven years the Bilenky Junkyard Cross set the bar pretty high. On Saturday, photographer Pano K shot highlights of the eighth annual incarnation of this auto-part-yard battle of man against machine and common sense. On Sunday, our Pho...

Editor’s note: Cole Oberman, a local professional mountain bike racer, who grew up in Pennsylvania and now lives, works, and trains in Philadelphia. Over the coming weeks, Cole will give us an inside look at what it takes to be a pro bike racer. A focus of his training and his column is the Trans-Sylvanian Epic, a multi-day mountain bike race based  as its name implies  in the heart of Pen...